Gender Diversity among Defined Contribution Plan Administrators and the Potential Impact on Retirement Outcomes

This article explores how gender representation has varied among defined contribution plan administrators from 2000 to 2017 and the relation between gender and some potential measures of plan quality. We find that there has been a significant increase in gender diversity among defined contribution plan administrators, where approximately 30% of plan administrators were female in 2000, increasing to approximately 50% in 2017. We also find that plans run by female administrators have attributes that would widely be considered “better” than those run by male administrators, because they were more likely to exhibit better plan governance attributes, more likely to automatically enroll participants, and more likely to offer target-date funds.